Destiny's April update boosts the Light cap to 335 and remixes the Prison of Elders

Destiny's next big update will boost the Light cap to 335, the first time Destiny's maximum power level has increased since The Taken King expansion rolled out in September. Bungie revealed many of the changes in store for the game in a livestream on Wednesday, the first of three weekly presentations planned to outline the update ahead of its April 12 launch.

Bungie is holding off on highlighting all of the new gear and advancement options until next week, but it did confirm that a newly refurbished Prison of Elders will be one way to find powerful new gear in the post-320 world. The three-player arena will offer two new modes, one recommended for players with 260 or greater Light and one for players with 320 or greater.

The first mode will mostly be an updated version of the original Prison of Elders (which is cool, since it hasn't been very useful since The Taken King came out), while the second will be a special three-round Challenge mode. Rather than progressing through the usual waves of enemies and bosses and culminating in the Treasure Room, the weekly Challenge version will have three rounds, each of which will pit you against one of eight different Taken bosses. Much like the Trials of Osiris, you can buy a Challenge of the Elders scorecard to track your progress, then turn the card in to Variks for weapons and armor up to Light 335.

The April update will also add a new Mission called "Pretender to the Throne", in which Guardians take on a new Taken threat gathering power after the (final) fall of Oryx. A new strike and a Taken version of the Winter's Run strike will also be available - that's the one where you fight a Fallen Archon who comes out of a big egg thing, except now he's Taken, so watch out for that. Expect a new bounty of bounties and quest lines as well. Bungie said nothing about those mysterious Taken-looking Guardians, but it did show a few new screens, as you can see above.

Tune in on March 30 for more on the April update's new gear, and again on April 6 for info on the changes coming to Destiny's inner workings and the Crucible.

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Connor Sheridan

I got a BA in journalism from Central Michigan University - though the best education I received there was from CM Life, its student-run newspaper. Long before that, I started pursuing my degree in video games by bugging my older brother to let me play Zelda on the Super Nintendo. I've previously been a news intern for GameSpot, a news writer for CVG, and now I'm a staff writer here at GamesRadar.